From fighting VCs to funding Hindi films
In a new column for BusinessWeek Online, Vivek Wadhwa, Founder, Chairman and former CEO of US-based enterprise software firm Relativity Technologies, talks about how he fought--and won--against his Venture Capital investors while recovering from a massive heart attack. And how he has now stepped back to do something "less stressful": produce Hindi films.
"While still in the Critical Care Unit, I received a phone call saying that my investors felt the need to renegotiate the terms of the current financing. Two days later and still bandaged, I left the hospital and walked, uninvited, into a closed-door meeting, where investors were trying to convince my executive team to accept more money for a revised agreement that would give them majority ownership. I flatly refused, and ended the meeting," he says. "My investors sent me a letter demanding that I step aside and allow the younger brother of a partner in one of their firms to take over the company I had founded, built with most of my life savings, and paid for with a cardiac arrest. For the next few months, I spent what little energy I had fighting people I formerly held in high regard," he adds.
Click Here to read the full column.